Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Today was a fun day for our focus on Thanksgiving! I really made the children think about things they were thankful for!!

Our Thankful Tree
For our first project we completed our thankful tree. I got the idea from pinterest (of course) but ours turned out looking way different than the one on there (and in my opinion - better). I found some good branches outside that would work and found a vase in my stash that would work. I was originally going to do paper leaves that we would write what we were thankful on. Well I went by the Dollar Tree to see if they had any die cuts of leaves (because our Dollar Tree is good about carrying stuff like that) but they did not. :-( I had some cardstock and was just planning on going to the library in a couple of days and just use their die cut machine when I went into Wal-Mart and found that they had packages of fake leaves for a very good price! I realized they would look prettier anyways so I decided to go that route.

So I got out some ribbon and stapled ribbon loops to each of the leaves. I then had the kids sit down and I told them for every leaf I held up they had to name something they were thankful for and I wrote it down. I had 26 leaves total so that meant they were going to have to use their brains and think beyond the obvious things to be thankful for! And they did a very good job and it was a very sweet, tender conversation that we had as a result! (My heart completely melted when Seth gave Heaven as one of his things to be thankful for!)

So we hung the leaves on the tree and then I took all the things they said they were thankful for and made a really cute little 4x6 picture with them that I framed and sat at the base of the tree! I am so very pleased with how it turned out!

Here is a picture of what is in the frame (in case you want to read all the things they are thankful for)

Our Bread Basket Napkin
Once again this was from another idea I found on Pinterest (surprise surprise). The idea there was actually for a tablecloth - they made handprints of the children on the tablecloth and made them look like turkeys. I loved the idea but we already had a tablecloth and I didn't like this idea on the tablecloth we have. But I still loved the idea! So I decided to do it on our napkin that will go in our breadbasket. (which, by the way, our bread basket is going to be another project - we are making it to look like a turkey - SO FUN!)

So on three of the corners I had each child do a handprint turkey and then I decorated and labeled the fourth corner! I can't wait to see how cute this is going to look in our bread basket!

Here are the pictures. You will notice that the napkin is bunched up in the middle - that is because it was still drying when I took the pictures. We put it on top of another towel so that our paint would not bleed through to the table. (btw - we used fabric paint and fabric markers). Also notice the fabric of the napkin - this is the same fabric that I am making my dinner napkins out of (that I mentioned yesterday!)

It was a fun day for our focus on Thanksgiving! We still have lots to do over the next couple of weeks! We have a surprise that we are making for each member of our family that is coming to each of the dinners. We have to make our napkin rings, and the turkey bread basket, and our place cards for the tables. And there are a few other things I would like to throw in there if we can find time!

This has been a lot of work and has kept us busy but it has been a lot of fun and we are making memories to cherish for years and years to come! LOVE IT!!